Transactions within the competitive bidding process usually involve a buyer going to known suppliers, typically having prior course of dealings with the buyer, for the benefit of an entity for whom the buyer is providing a service. A buyer prepares a bid package from the information supplied by the entity. The buyer then distributes the bid package to suppliers that it is well aware of with requests for bids, quotes or prices regarding contents of the bid package. These known suppliers that received the bid package, review the contents of the bid package and each supplier formulates a bid, quote or price for completion of the bid package. The bids are received by the buyer, processed and the lowest bid from these known suppliers is awarded the contract. While this system has a component of competitiveness and thusly should yield the best bid for the bid package, this conclusion is based on a false premise that the only suppliers that could carry out the contents of the bid package are the ones that the buyer knows of or has reason to know of. However, it is unlikely that a buyer could know every supplier that could carry out the bid package. Thus, it is not necessarily true that the best bid (i.e., from the best qualified suppliers) for the project that the buyer wishes completed has been received. Therefore, there is a need to provide a buyer with information to supplement the buyer's preselected list of known suppliers that would competitively bid on the buyer's project. The instant invention provides such supplemental information. A buyer who is ready to release a bid package to its known list of suppliers would sequester a preselected list of suppliers that it knows. At the same time, the buyer would utilize the instant invention's exchange to review and select additional suppliers. Thus, the buyer would have two pools of suppliers to generate competitive bids therefrom. The first pool is the buyer's preselected list, while the second pool is the listed from the instant invention's exchange (note that suppliers could overlap pools). Thus, the bid package is prepared by the buyer and released to all suppliers in both pools in order to provide an enhanced competitive bidding with respect to the bid package.
Competitive bidding is required by law for the buying and selling of goods for a large portion of the public sector marketplace. Competitive bidding is also desirable in the private marketplace and is an efficient method of using capital to by goods and services.
As practiced today, the state of the art, requires the manual methods of packaging, bidding and processing for the buying and selling of goods and services. These methods have problems associated therewith. These problems include slowness, inefficiency, and being confined or restrained to a local area. The effect of the present invention is to increase the number of qualified bidders. Heretofore, prior system were necessarily constrained geographically. The state of the art, as practiced today, requires the seller to also proceed through the laborious process of finding and following through with sales leads having low chances of success in either the public or private sector. The instant invention permits sellers to maintain a specialization in a particular area of supply goods and/or services because sellers can reduce overhead by getting more leads with minimal salesforce intervention. The instant invention provides a seller with a larger geographical area to bid from and because of this larger geographical area, this allows seller to focus on their niche area of supply for goods and/or services. The instant invention provides a mutuality of benefit for both a buyer and a seller per transaction: the seller obtains a decrease in the cost for obtaining a RFQ, which in turn reduces the seller's overhead, which in turn reduces the price for an item, which in turn allows a seller to be within the buyer's project forecast; while the buyer is able to stay with budget for a project and possibly complete a project under the budget.
The state of the art has reached a chasm in which buyers are unable to find qualified sellers and sellers are unable to find appropriate markets. Although the work or job reaches completion, it is at the cost of the buyers paying a premium and the sellers often losing a sale for their inability to sell within the buyer's projected budgets.
The following reflects the state of the art of which applicant is aware and is included herewith to discharge applicant's acknowledged duty to disclose relevant prior art. It is stipulated, however, that none of these references teach singly nor render obvious when considered in any conceivable combination the nexus of the instant invention as disclosed in greater detail hereinafter and as particularly claimed.
“Priceline.com” focuses on the small consumer market buyers searching for a seller. Its style of business is a demand collection system that enables consumers to use the Internet to save money on products and services while enabling sellers to generate incremental revenue. Incremental revenue means a seller making money with volume of purchases instead of individual retail sale purchases. In order to work, PRICELINE must collect individual consumer offers whereby the consumer's offer is guaranteed (by a credit card) for a particular product or service at a price set by the consumer and communicates that demand directly to participating sellers or to their private databases. Consumers agree to hold their offers open for a specified period of time to enable PRICELINE to fulfill their offers from inventory provided by participating sellers. Once fulfilled, offers generally cannot be canceled. By requiring consumers to be flexible with respect to brands, sellers and/or product features, PRICELINE enables sellers to generate incremental revenue without disrupting their existing distribution channels or retail pricing structures. Thus, for the sale of goods the purchase price is very close to the actual cost per unit price. The buyer is unsure of what the outcome will be, i.e. will he or she get the airline seat or will someone else get it because of a higher bid or quicker time of response for that seat. The present invention, in contrast, is directed to sophisticated buyers and sellers that are registered users of the present invention. The present invention is a generalized request for quote system on which buyers post projects open for bid as well as their prequalification requirements of sellers. Qualified registered sellers are notified directly by the system. Sellers from their accounts may purchase bid packages and place a bid on a posted job. Jobs are accumulated and returned to the buyer upon the closure date. Further the present invention provides to its registered users resources related to the contract bid process. Such resources include trade community discussions on code issues, finance, taxes, import/export, news and employment opportunities. To allow access to the system of the present invention, there is a registration process that must be undertaken by both buyers and sellers. The registration process provides security to buyers because it verifies whether particular sellers are bondable or have mercantile warranties. The buyers and sellers and their respective transactions fall within the areas of business-to-business, business-to-consumer and business-to-government.
“eBay.com” is one of the many auction sites available on the Internet. These auction sites are designed to attract buyers for a given item that is being sold. These auction sites are opposite of what the present invention constitutes. With the present invention buyers define the product or service they wish to purchase. Sellers propose bids to provide the product or complete the service requested if they are deemed qualified by the buyer.
The following are other “e-commerce” businesses that reflect the state of the art that the applicant is aware of.
“Bidfocus.com” collects data through the use of a search engine on the World Wide Web, comb through professional journals and also from the web sites of existing clients, and presents the data gathered to suppliers and vendors who are looking for business.
General Electric's Trading Partnership is a network to competitively purchase goods internally, as in an intranet.
McDonnell Douglas—Boeing Internal Buying Network is utilized to purchase supply parts competitively for the corporation's internal use.
“PrimeContract.com” provides owners of construction projects and construction companies with a competitive advantage by harnessing the power of the Internet to electronically automate the entire sourcing, bidding and procurement processes for commercial construction projects around the world. “PrimeContract.com” controls, audits and analyzes the procurement of services and materials needed by the Architect, Engineering and Contracting (AEC) industry (a.k.a. the A/E Community). By using PrimeContract.com to source materials, services, equipment, share projects plans, and then bid, procure, and purchase in an online marketplace in order to facilitate a faster, on-time project delivery and reduce project costs. “PrimeContract.com” helps construction companies manage their complex supply chains with uniform processes, while enabling the project owner to make trade-off decisions about construction costs versus lifetime operational costs
“Epylon.com” is a website designed to unite education and government buyers together with private and corporate suppliers to facilitate commerce, enhance efficiency and reduce costs. The website provides comparisons of products and services and makes the process of purchasing more efficient; broadens the supplier base and enables quotes and bids to be sent and received electronically. The website adheres to the education and government sector's important purchasing practices, compliance with legal regulations, generates detailed reports for auditing purposes and supports customer-specific pricing that reflects current contract pricing. Ancillary services offer education and government business officials the unique opportunity to create an online community and forum for sharing best practices and other valuable information. For suppliers, the website offers access to a large, national aggregated base of education and government buyers that spend more than $850 billion annually on a wide array of products and services. The website notifies suppliers, via e-mail, of requests for quotes (RFQ)s and invitations to bid from qualified buyers, increasing quote and bid opportunities and leading to additional sales with education and government institutions. The website reduces a supplier's overhead in sales and process costs by automating the processing of routine orders for buyers, freeing a supplier's sales force to focus on servicing existing customers generating new business. The website also reduces a supplier's overhead by enabling suppliers to send order confirmations, bids and RFQs electronically and by migrating customer service online. The website reduces a supplier's customer acquisition costs by enabling business to be conducted electronically through a customized e-commerce network. Suppliers' products and information are published electronically to a global buying community leading to increased revenue growth for suppliers and a shorter sales process. The website permits suppliers to leverage traditionally sales and marketing efforts by acting as an extension of a supplier's existing sales and marketing efforts through offering the opportunity of suppliers to cross-sell, announce new products and run targeted promotions to a large buying community.
“Cometotrade.com” is a website where members post requests to buy or sell and the webmaster will search internationally for companies to supply or purchase the posted products. Buyers and sellers can meet, chat, bid, offer and negotiate online. Members have the option to be notified when a new posting of interest is submitted. The website offers a value-added service to assist clients with the financial, transactional and logistical necessities of international trade.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,243,515, issued on Sep. 7, 1993, to Lee discloses an electronic bidding system that only receives a verbal, telephoned or faxed, bid from a potential subcontractor to a general contractor. It holds this information and electronically delivers it on a preset date to the general contractor and the reporting of amounts other subcontractors had bid to each of the subcontractors participating in the competitive subbidding process.
Below are other patents and electronic documents that reflect the state of the art that the applicant is aware of.
U.S. Pat. No.ISSUE DATEINVENTOR5,794,207Aug. 11, 1998Walker et al.6,014,644Jan. 11, 2000Erickson6,041,308Mar. 21, 2000Walker et al.